First off, my fingernails are NOT cute. They’re a wreck. Honestly, it’s a matter of some embarrassment.

Second- you’ll be glad to know that Dan Savage and I are making peace, we’re setting up a Skype call to hash things out. I’m hoping that he’ll get the overlap between what the Ace community is doing and his interest in pushing the national dialog around nonmonogamy.

I want to call out that moment that you describe, where we sit across the table and realize that there’s intimacy there and realize that it doesn’t have to go in a sexual direction. There’s something powerful there, a skill that most asexuals learn of stopping and saying “There’s the potential for intimacy here, what direction do I want to take it in?” It’s not just that there are nonsexual directions to chose from, it’s that some of those directions can create things that are extraordinary.

On a fundamental level, business is about people connecting. So is art. So is politics. So is social justice. So is science. Drive that sense of intimacy in the right direction and you don’t just get a warm fuzzy feeling, you get a killer startup, a magnum opus, a piece of legislation, a community center, a breakthrough discovery. Get smart with it, and intimacy can create anything.